Is Lack of Nursing Education the Key Cause of Poor Patient Care Outcome?

Discussion 3: Is lack of nursing education the key cause of poor patient care outcome?
Ngozi Duru
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3 - 1: Target population
The target population is nursing staff with various levels of education from diverse institutions. Since the aim of the project is to determine whether there is a link between the nursing education level and patient outcome, comparing the results is necessary to identify any emerging trends how education and expertise are relevant to improving the quality of care. The sampling strategy will rely on random sampling to collect the data over time using a non-experimental and explanatory study design. The data collected will focus on one hospital at the Teaching Hospital Umuna Orlu, Imo-state Nigeria and this is more feasible.
All the nurses will be recruited from the nursing staff they will be fully informed about the study. After giving their consent to participate in the study, the study participants will be interviewed. Their responses will be recorded anonymously, while it is expected that the hospital administrators will provide information about the nursing composition, experience, level of education and composition. The exclusion and inclusion criteria for the study will be based on the experience level for specific hospital units. Any practicing nurse who has been in practice for less than a year will be excluded from the study.
The nurses will also be separated depending where the work from acute care setting units, surgical units and the general wards. The quality of patient care affects patient safety, and this includes nursing education, nursing staffing and the practice environment (Chau et al., 2015). Previous studies focus more on individual characteristics while ignoring the role of contextual factors in the hospital settings this includes nursing education, expertise and the nursing practice environment. Both individual and contextual factors influence the work environment, and when the co-workers are experts this improves the quality of care.
Reference
Chau, J. P., Lo, S. H., Choi, K. C., Chan, E. L., McHugh, M. D., Tong, D. W., ... & Lee, D. T. (2015). A longitudinal examination of the association between nurse staffing levels, the practice environment and nurse-sensitive patient outcomes in hospitals. BMC health services research, 15(1), 1.
2] Discussion Setting and contextual factors
The contextual factors are associated with the organization rather than the individual factors. The organization context also affects the individual outcomes in the workplace, since the expertise, nursing education, composition of the nursing staff and the workplace environment are all related to the organization context (McHugh & Lake, 2010). The contextual approach is relevant to understanding how the organizational culture affects the nursing practice. Both the education level of years of experience are individual factors that affect the nurse' expertise. At the same time, the nursing practice experience establishes the culture that supports certain values and facilitates the development of nursing expertise (McHugh & Lake, 2010).
Before undertaking the study there is a need to inform the administrators and nurse leader, how the research study affects the Teaching Hospital Umuna Orlu, Imo-state. The American Sentinel University Institutional has established Institutional Review Board, and there will also be communication with the hospital administrators, as it will be possible to determine how the contextual factors affect nursing experience. To begin with the nurses are divided into groups based on their level of education, and further subdivided based on their experience as practicing nurses.
Typically studies use inpatient information while excluding rehabilitation units and his will be the case in the project. The contextual factors like education, staffing and their composition are all provided by the hospital administration (Aiken et al., 2008). Additionally, information on patient fatalities and cases of patient falls of hospital acquired diseases, and then this will be integrated when there are written hospital records to ensure that there is follow-up on the cases. There is a challenge to access all the relevant information, since he administrators also oversee that the patients’ safety is maintained, and in some cases nurses might not report issues that compromise nursing safety.
References
Aiken, L. H., Clarke, S. P., Sloane, D. M., Lake, E. T., & Cheney, T. (2008). Effects of hospital care environment on patient mortality and nurse outcomes. The Journal of nursing administration, 38(5), 223-229
McHugh, M. D., & Lake, E. T. (2010). Understanding clinical expertise: nurse education, experience, and the hospital context. Research in nursing & health, 33(4), 276-287.
#3Discussion Forum 4 Question 1
A questionnaire and survey instrument will be created with the aim of collecting data on patient outcome. The first aspect is patient medical records, and this is relevant to collecting all the background information including medical procedures, adverse effects suffered while staying in hospital and demographic details. Another related feature is looking at the patient outcome based on the collected information while relying on quality indicators, including the risk of infection and injury while at hospital.
The instrument is adapted from the study by Li & Kenward (2006), which looked into how different nursing education programs prepared nurses to work in clinical settings. The researchers highlighted that the nurses’ perception about the effectiveness of the programs were considered when determining how this influenced the competency of the nurses. There is a need to integrate patient outcome and identify how differ education levels influenced the level of nursing expertise. Hence the instrument would be modified to accommodate the measurement of patient outcome to be correlated with the level of nursing education.
Additionally, patient satisfaction with the nursing care incorporates elements of nursing care, nursing proficiency, trusting relationships and education levels. There available response range from strongly agree to strongly disagree. In using the instruments, the researchers’ original review on consistency and validity is used as the benchmark for the study. Since the study participants were from the same hospital, it was feasible to contact those eligible and hand over the questionnaire survey rather than mail to them. Only those forms that answering the questions will be considered relevant to the research study.
Reference
Li, S., & Kenward, K. (2006). A national survey on elements of nursing education. Chicago, IL: National Council of State Boards of Nursing.
4Discussion Forum 5 Question 1
The data collection is constructed focusing on nursing education and patient outcome, including the level of attainment and transition from the RN to the BSN. The practice characteristics include the areas of operations. In the acute care settings, patients are at a high risk of mortality compared to the general ward. The PICO question is associated with, the case how nursing education influences patient outcome and patient safety. This is consistent with correlation designs and the database search strategies combining nursing education and patient care or patient outcome or patient safety.
The patient care outcome is the dependent variable in the research study, while the level of nursing education is the independent variable. Consequently the intervention is improving nursing education, while increasing the funding of nursing programs to ensure smoother and easier transition. Improving patient care, reduced hospitalization, and reduced deaths are all patient safety indicators that determine whether the interventions have been effective. This is necessary to inform nurses and policy makers how to improve nursing competence as nurses transfer their knowledge in the workplace.
The rationale for choosing patient safety indicators is that they help to determine whether there is a positive change...